Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Wind Turbines: A Path to Sustainability with Challenges

Burcin Atilgan Turkmen and Fatos Germirli Babuna ()
Additional contact information
Burcin Atilgan Turkmen: Chemical Engineering Department, Bilecik Seyh Edebali University, Bilecik 11230, Turkey
Fatos Germirli Babuna: Environmental Engineering Department, Istanbul Technical University, Maslak 34469, Turkey

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 13, 1-23

Abstract: This study aims to evaluate in detail the environmental impacts of the turbines used for electricity generation by wind energy, from a life cycle perspective. For this purpose, a comprehensive literature review is conducted and the life cycle environmental impacts of two sizes of wind turbines, namely 3.6 and 4.8 MW, in Turkey are analyzed. Sustainability studies, especially life cycle assessment (LCA) findings, yield healthy results only if the data used are site-specific. The system has been modeled using GaBi software and the Ecoinvent database. The functional unit is defined as 1 kWh of generated electricity. The impacts have been estimated using the CML 2 Baseline 2001 method. The 4.8 MW turbine has lower environmental impacts than the other turbine. The construction of wind turbines has the greatest share of the environmental impacts of all the options considered. Recycling materials at the end of plant life can reduce unwanted environmental impacts by up to 49%. Similar studies based on site-specific data will help to inform electricity producers and policymakers about wind energy’s current impacts and environmental hotspots. Conducting analogous studies is critical to reducing the environmental impacts of wind energy, which will play an important part in the future of the energy sector.

Keywords: environmental impact; life cycle assessment; renewable energy; sustainability; wind turbine; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/13/5365/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/13/5365/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:13:p:5365-:d:1421065

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().